Opinion

Reinventing conservatism sounds like an oxymoron. How exactly would you reimagine a political philosophy that — as its intellectual father, Edmund Burke, expounded more than two centuries ago — largely consists of opposing radical reinventions? And yet a drastic rethink is what center-right politicians in much of Europe urgently need. After all, their main standard-bearer, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, is ...

It seems to be a rite of passage that as technology billionaires get older, they spend more time chasing dreams they might have fantasized about as kids. There’s Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos with their rockets, and now Mark Zuckerberg, aged 37, with his plans to build an alternate digital reality known as the metaverse. Last week, Zuckerberg announced that ...

Dear shopper, how are you doing? Wall Street is dying to know. Investors and market strategists are poring over a spate of economic data and commentary from corporate earnings calls, trying to determine how people feel about spending money in these strange times. Some investors are worried and some are jubilant, and there are data to support both perspectives. Yet ...

Does it matter if the Bank of England’s (BOE) Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decides to hike its rate this Thursday? Or if it instead waits for more data on the labor market and raise instead at the December 16 meeting? Not so much. But it really does matter what the MPC does after that. It won’t do anything for the ...

The battle over climate change is putting an old maxim to the test: Where there’s a will, there’s a way. The COP26 climate summit in Glasgow offers reasons to hope it will be proven correct, particularly on a challenge at the heart of the issue: financing the global transition to clean energy. There is no longer any doubt about the ...

Two and a half months since the fall of Kabul, the international community has yet to figure out how to stop Afghanistan’s new masters from imposing harsh restrictions on women’s freedoms. Yet one shift in the way negotiators handle their dealings with the Taliban would go a long way toward holding the regime accountable. Having promised to make the Taliban ...

“I don’t even know what is going on,” President Vladimir Putin complained to ministers last month, exasperated that even “well-educated people, with higher degrees” continue to refuse Russia’s Covid-19 vaccination. “Why wait for the disease and its severe consequences?” For an administration obsessed with demographics, scientific reputation and global status, the blow has been devastating. With far too few citizens ...

After decades of sustaining a relatively modest nuclear arsenal, China is moving swiftly to build more and better doomsday weapons. The trend would be dangerous at any time. But given the precipitous decline in relations with the US, a catastrophe is becoming all too likely. Both sides need to restore stability to this relationship before the world faces a devastating ...

Ten years of extend and pretend over the Monte Paschi crisis are coming home to roost. Talks for a sale of the troubled 500-year-old lender — nationalised in 2017 — collapsed on October 24. That’s when the Italian state apparently balked at the some 7 billion-euro ($8.1 billion) capital injection that Milan-based UniCredit SpA demanded to take on the troubled ...

The history of United Nations climate conferences is a history of failure. That comes with the territory. If anyone meeting was to solve all the problems of preventing catastrophic global warming, there would be no need for any further action. That’s the best way to think about the disappointing outcome of talks between the Group of 20 large economies during ...